Wendy Wimmer Featured on Authors on the Air Podcast

Thank you to Authors on the Air’s My Bookshelf Slays podcast and host Melissa Westemeier for sharing this lovely, uplifting interview with AHP’s Wendy Wimmer! Wimmer and Westemeier talk zombies, hedgehogs, roller rinks, and the power of the “what if” while writing, all while discussing her short story collection, Entry Level! 

On what fuels her imagination while writing, Wimmer says:

Usually it’s ‘the flash.’ The ‘what if.’ In Entry Level’s case, what if a roller skating rink could make you younger? A lot of times, that will inspire it. But sometimes, it’s just a situation. I wrote a short story in the book about a cruise ship. And it’s about a cruise I literally took, where I felt like a weird outsider as a middle-30s in a crowd of retirees and young 20-somethings. And I thought, I don’t want to party, and I don’t want to have dinner at four. I’m somewhere in the middle.

I realized I was unnerved by the globalization and colonization element of the cruise ship industry, where the crew were introducing themselves with these very Americanized or Westernized names, and I knew that their names were not “Michael” or ‘David.’ It was really bothering me how ‘part of the wallpaper’ they were trying to be, clearly because the passengers needed that or something. And that’s where that story came from—in some cases it’s just a situation.

If you’re looking for your next read, look no further. On Entry Level, Westemeier says:

This is a book I’m telling people about. If you are finding yourself in a little bit of a reading slump and you need to trigger your attention span, this short story collection is going to do it. Every single one is so radically different—so standalone-excellent.

Tune in to Wimmer’s segment on My Bookshelf Slays here.